Thursday, February 6, 2014

Wake Me Up For The Tour de France So I Can Hit "Snooze" For Three More Weeks

So I went and checked the forecast, and it looks like there's a 60% chance that they might get one inch. One inch!

Do you know what I would give to have only one inch of snow on the ground right now? (Well, it's a rhetorical question, but if you must know, I'd go as high as US$50, or CAD$50.) Here in New York we've got like three snowstorms sitting on top of each other now, with another one due to arrive this weekend. It's just storms humping storms here at this point. You've got to climb mountains of plowed snow just to jaywalk, and this morning as I was doing just that I fell through the roof of a Miata convertible!

And as far as the temperature, I guess 20 degrees American is pretty chilly, but that stopped feeling cold to me like two snowstorms ago.

So "Did you ride?" Come on! You people in Portland owe it to us to ride! You're the most coddled cyclists in America, yet we've heard just about every complaint possible from you people over the years: "We've got scary streetcar tracks that make us crash;" "They put speed bumps on the Hawthorne Bridge that make us crash:; "They won't let us ride through the cemetery and dishonor the dead with our Lycra-clad asses". WHAT-ever. For the sake of your fellow cyclists, nut and/or vulva up for once in your lives and get out there, goddamn it!

(Or don't, actually. It's probably pretty dangerous there when it snows. I bet the typical Portland driver goes into a tailspin at the slightest hint of snowfall, even with the standard-issue Subaru. If I lived in Portland I'd probably just stay at home with the giant smelly dog I own because I live in Portland.)

The top 10% of performers were rated on average as 25% better looking than the laggards.The scientists conclude that humans have evolved to recognise athletic performance in faces.

Yeah, duh! First of all, everybody knows PEDs make you better-looking. Just look at Lance Armstrong:

Come on, he never would have landed a dreamboat like Matthew McConaughey without the juice.

Second of all, do you really need a clinical study to conclude that nobody likes the French Breakaway Loser Pain Face?

(Thomas "Suitcase of Courage" Voeckler attempting to lick his own helment strap.)

And here's some more obviousness:Dr Postma and his team found that women who were on the contraceptive pill were less likely to link attractiveness to performance."Typically, studies find that women using the pill have a reduced preference for masculine faces, and we found the same phenomenon: women on the pill had a reduced preference for faster cyclists," said Dr Postma.

I didn't go to science school or anything, but I don't need a study to tell me you can be less picky when there's no chance of getting knocked up. Hey, if you're on the pill you can afford to have pity sex with a lousy cyclist once in awhile, because you know you're not going to wind up with a baby that looks like this:

(Encore, le "FBLPF.")

Also, he looks like he knows how to use his tongue.

And then there's this:

Many men argue that they find it difficult to rate the attractiveness of other males, but in the study the researchers found that men who took part had a fairly similar view on who was handsome as the women.

I wonder if at any point the researchers considered the possibility that men who volunteer to take part in studies that involve ranking the attractiveness of male professional athletes happen to be attracted to other men.

Maybe they can do another study to find out for sure.

As for me, the only way I can sit through a bike race nowadays is if it's reenacted with stop-motion videography, like this video I saw on VeloNews:

Though they left out the drug test afterwards:

Lastly, there are a list of acceptable excuses for running over a cyclist or pedestrian with your car, including but not limited to:

Persis Draper, 92, said she was on her way to visit a friend when she experienced a bout of diarrhea. She called her friend to cancel, but wanted to make a stop at the grocery store on the way home.“I decided while I was out to get some rolls. I had a potluck to go to,” Draper said. “While I was on my way that’s when the accident occurred.”

But then the diarrhea struck again:

“I didn’t leave a scene of an accident because I was running away. I’m not the type of individual who would do something like that. I left because I had diarrhea,” she said. “I went back to check and there wasn’t anybody there.”

Uh, I'd imagine that when you're 92, every bowel movement is diarrhea.

I rode in Portland's benighted suburbs, through snowflakes, on a folding bike, in a headwind, to a corporate-ass job, and was glad to do it too. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

why is a 92 year old driving in the first place, with or without diarrhea? I think there should be a mandatory law that your license automatically expires at 70 and you have to retake the drivers test every 2 years to continue to drive. A car after all can be a lethal weapon so why would you want some olf senile fuck handling it. seriously.

Top hockey players were judged on average 25% more attractive than their underperforming teammates. This held for forwards, defensemen, and goalies. The exception was "enforcers" who saw no such advantage despite having bested many adversaries. "One possible reason for this may be all the facial scars and missing teeth," said the lead researcher, Melvin Schlongberg.

Scientists were judged to be 12.35% more attractive than most Hollywood actors, according to renowned psychology researcher, Arthur Morningwood. "the number is between 12.23 and 12.67%, depending upon factors such as which number we feel like making up, after all, this is psychology research." Dr. Morningwood wore Birkenstocks and a white lab coat at the time of the interview and talked very scientifical.

... Cleveland, sorry to hear you ran into a space occupied by sack of 92 year old sack of doody. take care of your knee... i can tell you, it sucks to ride when your knee hurts... my only saving grace for not riding is the meters of snow on the ground right now.

Dooth - pictures or it ain't so.Snob nailed it with the big smelly dog and the Subaru, and yes, I think cat 6 racing gets you an eye-roll in PDX, so they are not fast, thus, more ugly.Roooiille nailed it with the Abe Simpson reference.

I've been to Portlandia a couple of times but never had the chance to ride a bicycle while there. There do seem to be an unusual number of slackers, and the smell of weed everywhere (not that there is anything wrong with that), but the working stiffs I dealt with were your typical working stiffs, only wetter.

Anyplace with a bike assembly station in the airport can't be all bad. And the mass transit is actually useful.

PDX report: about 2 " on the ground, and more still on the way, 40 mph wind gusts, about 25 degrees.

Non stop TV storm coverage since I got home. WIth little mention of a school shooting in the burbs earlier today.

And yes, the reason I left work early was that people can't even drive in the rain here (go figure)let alone the snow. Many of us do (spent a few years in the Lake Erie snow belt) but it's the others I'm scared of.

I'm at home with wife, two kids, and two smelly dogs (cause I'm even more hip that most Portland hipsters- gotta make up for my lack of a ZZ Top beard).

Got the day off tomorrow as well, and gunna attach some zip ties to my Raleigh 20 twenty tires and have some folding, snowy, bikey fun then, once the traffic has settled down.

Sorry guys. It looked pretty PG 13 to me. I broke my leg wicked bitchin gnarly in '05 and had diarrhea for 6 weeks when I finally kicked the pain meds. SIX WEEKS. You ever applied neosporin to your bunghole? Oh momma it was necessary.

@ Jimboner:Wordstest evar case I had started in Negombo Sri Lanka, took it to Malé Maldives, lost days of upon days up in the squalid dayworker tower I inhabited, finally the boat I chartered to take me to a dive island shows up, crapper out of commish, I blendered some into the pristine environment off the back hanging onto the outboard, frequently. Remember the first session because we were puttering right by the Coke factory island. Later in the day we picked up a few dozen people off of a sinking boat hung up on a reef, the men crowding the front, the women and kids all in the back (100% muslim rules yo) and then began the longest evening I ever had, I was counting to THREE and sweating it, my glutes holding as much as they could. I thought about falling overboard accidentally on purpose, and crapping it up while they circled around. Daydreaming, sweating, delirious. Finally got to the island, ran up the shallows almost crying and seeing stars.

Thanks for all the shout-outs.I'm just back from visiting the Cleveland Police Dept. and not surprisingly it didn't go well. The CPD questioned why I wanted to file a report. Without the car's plate # there wasn't much they could do. And despite the fact that the shithead knew he hit me, didn't offer assistance and instead yelled for me to get the fuck off of the road, it was merely a hit and skip. The officer did wonder why even though I have a valid license and own a car I ride a bicycle to work.

McFly - I also had that diarrhea-after-stopping-dilaudid problem, but eating a lot of yogurt, rice, bananas etc. fixed it fairly soon. Nowadays, of course the scientific way of fixing that is the fecal transplant. Works like voodoo.

Roille - when i was a little kid in Canada BLA BLA BLA we used to dig warrens of snow tunnels in the huge drifts put up by the plows, and in the spring as they collapsed they would snuff out the unluckier kids; and I've always been incredibly lucky ever since.

Just in case I'm out of pocket tomorrow and can't do my usual best wishes for the weekend, let me just add:

Ride if you can and if you can ride, do my dog and me a favor: enjoy every minute of it.

This winter weather will end. Can't say when exactly, but my dog assures me that ground hogs don't know squat when it comes to weather forecasting. That whole see your shadow thing is just a prank rodents play on each other when they're hungover.

So, first let me say that it actually snowed more like 5 or 6 inches in Portland this afternoon. There are no snow plows for the roads, no specially fitted snow-buggies for the bike paths. Nothing like the NYC Dept of Sanitation rides over the East River bridges. Our trains don't even work in the snow. There's nothing but panic, and hoarding or if you were smart--tapping into the homebrew and jars of pickled shit you have in your basement, ready for when access to the grid (by which i mean netflix) is cut off.

The end is here, and we all have snow days, and nobody has to work or do anything because the snow has overtaken and overwhelmed the city.

So, you know...there is a benefit to mass hysteria and general snow-wussiness.

I have to wonder if Portland freakout is worse than Alabama freakout. Last weeks ice fest caught us all totally by surprise, in the middle of the day. Yesterday they predicted we might see a snowflake, immediately schools cancelled and EVERYONE, including your truly, stampeded for the exits. Not. Even. Ashamed.And thank you Leroy and the Dog, you have inspired me to get over my cold weather wussiness and get out and ride this week.

Did she have to buy the dinner rolls to stop up her booty? Their purchase seemed Highly Important to her, like, way more important than just having run over someone. "I got the diarrhea! Gotta buy those dough corks!"

Cyclists with diarrhea vs. cyclists without diarrhea. While riding and training this thing often confront with diverse side effects that's why a good diet can help. Meet and greet parking Gatwick South

About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!